


Rose Thinks (or) the Trial of Socrates

by madd47



Category: Homestuck, Homestuck 2
Genre: F/F, Mentions of Suicide, implicit manipulation, suicide ideation?
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2020-03-09
Updated: 2020-03-09
Packaged: 2021-02-28 23:27:50
Rating: Mature
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,731
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/23085505
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/madd47/pseuds/madd47
Summary: Rose steps out of her box, heroes share meals (or, at least, try), and Dirk philosophizes.
Relationships: Rose Lalonde/Kanaya Maryam
Comments: 2
Kudos: 17





	Rose Thinks (or) the Trial of Socrates

Rose never understood why the Prince of Socks-and-Sandals did what he did before this. She always thought that, from his lack of self-worth and denying the validity of his own emotions, Dirk was incredibly depressed. His actions often betrayed a mind that was always -- _always_ \-- ready to die. In a way, Rose could sympathize.

Of course, it was not too hard for her to see things from his perspective anymore. She understood what message Dirk was pushing now. In fact, she could almost see the parallels to her a story she, once upon a time, told. She and her friends, she learned, had grown complacent in their status as the exalted “Creators,” and canon had begun to depose them from their lavish position. Their reality had begun to fray at its very edges. A great change was coming, Rose could feel it; she had seen it. Its very existence once tore at her very health.

She remembered the day they stepped across that threshold of blazing light. She did not know it at the time, but the pieces of reality had changed. No longer were they ruled by “alpha” and “doomed” timelines, or parallel universes daring to peer into the great dark unknown and become destroyed. Now, they were ruled by a failing continuum of relevance, truth, and essentiality. She began to understand, those days she spent locked in her apartment, the meaning of canon.

Rose considered her true “awakening” the day of John’s twenty-third birthday. John’s choice caused a rift in the world of canon. Something about her condition snapped, and Rose experienced a jolt of sickness she had not encountered before. When Kanaya came home to find her wife with her eyes screwed shut and her head resting on a toilet bowl, she was, by decree of the Matriarch, to remain in bed.

What Kanaya did to protect her wife was admirable, Rose had to admit. She played a very difficult balancing act, carrying the life of her species on one shoulder and the health of her lover on the other. Rose, looking back on it, found it admirable. She found it a shame that Kanaya did not see things as she now did.

It should be said that Rose did not look back on her ascent to true godhood as a tragedy. She did not put herself on the same levels as Icarus, Oedipus, or any of their peers. She saw herself as something more now. She was fortunate to receive such a form. She was _above_ it all, now. The true understanding of Light had granted her the ability to comprehend the mysteries of life that she had been denied before. Rose Lalonde was more than a goddess now; she was omniscient.

In her metal form, Rose had senses beyond what she once knew. Now a being tied both thematically and metaphysically to the concept of “fortune,” her powers as a Seer had now become something more. However, there was a threshold she crossed that elicited a strange feeling. Fortune had, seemingly, left the equation all together. Her “misgivings,” as Dirk called them, were something far from able to be explained in the limit of her personal lexicon. In fact, the ascended Seer of Light could only explain it one way:

A gut feeling.

It was foolish, though, to expect her to believe such things. They subsided at the strangest moments. One moment she would be pacing the deck of the Theseus in foreboding, ontological worry, and the next... nothing at all. In fact, at that moment, her mind seemed to clear without the comfort of logic at all, as if a calming wave cloaked the pangs of doubt from her experienced mind. She tried not to think on it too much. What remained of her emotions were not important; she was going to be _fine_.

Terezi and Dirk, from Rose’s observations, were axiomatic opposites. Dirk, in the months it took them to find Deltritus, had become something akin to an atheist minister. He spoke to Rose quite often about the grandiosity and necessity of their plan; after all, she could see it, couldn’t she? He painted the picture, she had to guide the path there. Rose was not surprised that someone who destroyed his own personality and embraced the power of, quoting someone, “big brain mode” would become the equivalent of Plato in his own cave. In fact, it was tediously in-character.

Terezi, however, seemed far different after all this time. “She isn’t a ruler,” Dirk said. He was right, of course. If Dirk was Socrates, Terezi was more analogous to Diogenes. She did not see things from the higher position of a god, even though she had the potential to. (Rose had heard the stories from John about her wisdom.) Instead, Terezi struck out on her own to dramatically pose among the weeds of Deltritus while taking jabs at their attempts to secure the canon of their lives. Rose did not understand Terezi as well as she once did. Terezi seemed to take cheap jabs at them, trying to elicit a reaction that Rose could not provide. Even “wrestling” on the rough earth of their new world revealed nothing.

She thought.

Rose wondered what caused the outbursts that Terezi was hungering for. She generally harped on the same, general points: Dirk, canon, their friends, Kanaya.

_Kanaya._

That name struck a strange reaction through Rose’s circuits. Every time it left Terezi’s _ridiculous_ brain, she felt the urge to strike out and smack that smug grin off her grey face. Terezi used it as a panacea against Rose’s true godhood, over and over. Perhaps Dirk was right, and Terezi did not understand the intricacies of their mission here. The responsibility of not just different species but an entire vein of existence rested upon her shoulders. Their mission was righteous.

Why did it make her so sad? Rose could simulate the complex stimuli of lips on her own; she could recreate the feeling of cool fingers running down her stomach or play entire concertos by herself from memories alone. There was nothing she, with the help of her newer, more powerful form, could not create for her to enjoy. Sometimes it even did it without her explicitly requesting it.

Sometimes Rose felt a growing pit in the center of her chassis, or the building up of pressure behind her optical sensors. She felt the urge to stop, scream, slam her head into the walls. She felt the same need to climb back up on the railing over the frozen waterfall that she felt all those years ago. Perhaps, if she took that plunge, she would be able to _be_ who she really was. For a moment, maybe, the light could break through.

An annoyed huff left her vocal systems. They were running out of good mugs in this goddamn bullshit metaphor cave, and there was a whole new collection of shards at her feet. If Dirk stopped drinking half of his coffee at a time and never pouring the rest out, then he could be a good fucking roommate. He could build a goddamn fortress out of the amount of cups he kept in his anime corner. With the amount of porcelain he left hanging around all the time, they could put tiles on the floor of this philosophical jerk-off cave.

Okay, maybe that was a bit much. Why was she even drinking tea in the first place?

ROSE: I’ve really become a cliche, haven’t I?

She carefully bent down, removing her familiar dustpan from her sylladex and scooping up the fragmented pieces of mug. In her introspective philosophy session, it seemed she managed to slaughter the poor kitten on the front. Great, another overarching theme of her life: dead fucking cats.

She carefully dropped the porcelain cadaver into their designated trash bag before taking up her mop and cleaning up the remaining tea. Rose allowed her eyes to fall shut for a moment, and she reached out with her mind. Dirk was likely occupied for the moment. She was allowed to wander.

Once the mop had cleaned up, Rose leaned it back against the poster of the bikini-clad anime sniper babe. In her youth, she might have stolen glances at it before skittering off to whatever dark corner she called her own to write in her journal about her attempts to make her sexuality empirical. After that humiliating memory, she drifted to the entrance of the Eden cave, letting the wind guide her to the grasses nearby. There, in the Deltritian night, she could look up at the stars.

She knew it was a foolish activity. She was staring at stars that were lightyears away from the world that another version of her fought and died for. Among the thousands of stars, it was foolish to imagine that they were looking back at her.

It was not the stars she was looking for, though. She was looking for _that_ shred of starlight.

Galaxies away, she could see her in this moment of unsupervised clarity. Even without the use of her eyes, she could see the light. It was there in the distance; it was the lighthouse among the mind’s fog. It was ironic that, between a goddess abstractly linked to the concept of light and fortune and a vampire glowstick, the latter was the one that was the unwavering light in the darkness. For this moment, she tried to feel.

Kanaya was sat on the observation deck. Given the scuffing on the benches, she figured that sylph came here often. The flower on her horn was a cute touch -- violet, synthetic (she presumed). She looked so serene, so complacent in her spot. However, Rose could see deeper, by the grace of her all-seeing powers. So much pain.

ROSE: You look so beautiful.

She knew Kanaya could not hear her, but, for one moment, she wanted to try. She could let the crushing realism that Dirk touted like he was running his own camp on the Congo, with heads on sticks. Frankly, the idea of Dirk acting like Kurtz brought her an inkling of amusement. She could have fun with that image. She decided not to look into the concerning parallel too much.

Kanaya was fiddling with something in her lap while she stared out to the stars before her. Rose understood that it was a bow tie -- the one Rose wore to the wedding. It was a scene that made her servos ache.

The door hissed open. A familiar silhouette descended the stairs and sat down by her side. Rose could only see them talking -- any more and she might be caught -- but she knew what they were saying. Her brother, always so gallant, had seemed to make a habit out of sharing his lunch with the rainbow drinker. It was a quaint sight, like looking at a manger scene before it got covered with slush and utterly defiled by the elements.

ROSE: She doesn’t like too much salt.

Rose spoke into the void of the evening air as Dave offered a slab of, it seemed, some kind of jerky, which the troll denied. Whatever her dear old Roxy prepared, it must have been good, given Dave asked him for a larger serving. Either that or Dave was finally trying to put on weight. She knew her wife did not dislike too many things; life in the desert didn’t make her picky. She hated the idea of eating snails, which Rose found quite adorable when she broke into a rant. She always sounded so, so sweet.

As her sibling and wife chatted away, Rose -- ever the voyeur -- acted as if she was on that ship for a moment. She could, in the corner of her senses, hear Kanaya’s laugh as Dave wound off onto some arcane topic. Even after so long, he didn’t change. It warmed her heart. She could almost hear his song-like cadence talking about someth

Woah, woah, woah. You really can’t leave anyone alone for five fucking minutes, huh? Am I playing the Sims? A man takes ten minutes to formulate a plan for one of the greatest civilization ever created, and suddenly Rose is getting all oily-eyed? That’s not the Rose I brought along. Why don’t we fix this up?

Rose opens her eyes again and, for a moment, remembers the visions just before she took her plunge into the unknown. With a wistful smile, she reminds herself: happy endings are complacency. After all, she wrote the book on the dangers of complacency. The greater good needs you to trim some of that delicious, wholesome fat in order to keep yourself relevant. After all, would you fuckers be here if we weren’t making that beef fucking _lean?_ No. What kind of goddamn sausage shop would we be running if the sausage wasn’t good?

Rose’s robotic body levitates itself vertically once more. She glances once more up to the sky and, with a contemplative nod, drifts back towards the cave. She has a civilization to run.

Alright, we’ve all learned a lesson here today. I learned that you really can’t let these motherfuckers work on their own for ten minutes. (I’m surprised she wasn’t banging Terezi, though. Fuckers love the smut.) You learned that, no matter what, the philosophy always prevails.

Let’s put it this way. Have any of you read Euthyphro? I had a copy in my apartment before Jack tactical nuked that place. Really cool thing. Leather-bound, gold script on the front. Not something you find in your professor’s office. Honestly, it might’ve been bound with horse hair or some shit. But that’s not the point. I’ll give you the rundown.

Socrates is heading to court on the charges of impiety. His accuser thinks Socrates acts like hot shit and that he keeps questioning the gods, so he’s on trial for that shit. Euthyphro, this hot up-and-coming lawyer, is charging someone for murder. That someone is his fucking dad. He says that the pious thing to do would be to prosecute the murderer instead of being afraid of the impiety of prosecuting his family. Probably because Cronus chopped his dad’s nuts off or some shit.

Regardless. Socrates is like “oh shit, you must know what is pious and what isn’t.” A bunch of nerdy back-and-forth goes on until Plato comes to his point about piety, because he is, quote, ‘that asshole.’ He proposes that the gods either subscribe to a higher idea of ethics or that the gods create the rules of morality just because. Euthyphro doesn’t have an answer, the dialogue comes full circle, and Socrates trots off to go on trial.

I’m a god. I’m being straight-up here, I am a god. The people who are soaring across the galaxy are gods, mostly. What rule of morals do they hold to, and why? Well, probably the Americanized ones they grew up with or were socialized into. They appeal to a higher standard for ethical judgment. In the game, that judgment came from the big totally-not-a-metaphor light in the sky, Skaia. Just or heroic, right? I know some of you are banging on your screens like monkeys in cages when a child eats a goddamn plantain because this is out of character for the teenage me who was ready to die at any moment over a goddamn sea of Lovecraft porn.

I think the whole purpose of Euthyphro isn’t relevant. I think…

Sorry, kids, looks like Mx. “I’m a goddamn super duper spirit of Space possessing a furry” is getting uppity. Again. I’ll have to leave you all here. Don’t worry. There’s more of me where that came from. Don’t go off the goddamn rails again, or I will heave my goddamn slipper right down someone’s throat. Have fuuuuun.

Rose, the broken girl, was left alone, drifting through the air like a specter towards the birthplace of her creation. In the few moments she had after Dirk’s presence finished wiping away her worries, she tried her best to express the building pressure in the center of her chassis. She managed to grind herself to a halt by grabbing onto a nearby tree. She forced herself to sit against it, closing her eyes. The conflict was rising again. The ghost against the machine, the spirit against the body, heart against mind. She felt alone.

And her happy place was light years away.

**Author's Note:**

> that's right, brought to you by: i work for two and a half hours doing nothing waiting for students to finish their stuff. this was mostly fueled by my wish to write some rose, but then quickly shifting gears from writing about arcane and eldritch shit to sad robot rose. hopefully i at least got some mist in your eyes! wait--


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